Alleged rapist chased by police dog squad through suburbia

by adavies

Adam Davies
Senior Journalist

Adam was born in New South Wales and was educated at the prestigious Scots College in Sydney.
He has worked both in Australia and United Kingdom for some of the largest newspapers in the two respective countries.
He joined APN as a senior journalist at The Chronicle in Toowoomba in 2010, before moving to APN’S Brisbane Newsdesk in 2013 where he covered politics and court.
Adam won a 2015 Queensland Clarion Award - the state's premier journalism awards - and was named 2011 APN Daily Reporter of...

A POLICE officer has described how he chased an alleged rapist through a suburban neighbourhood in the dead of night before the dog squad eventually tracked the man down and he was arrested.

The man, a former Rockhampton sportsman who cannot be identified in order to protect the identity of his victim, has pleaded not guilty in the Brisbane District Court to rape, deprivation of liberty and assault with the intent to rape.

It is alleged he raped a woman during the early hours of June 11 last year in the front seat of his car while it was parked in a suburban Brisbane street after they had met earlier in the evening through mutual friends.

The court heard the man offered the woman a lift home from a party after her lift failed to show up.

On the way the woman agreed to have a drink with the man at a hotel located near her house before events allegedly turned nasty after the two left the hotel.

Constable Benjamin Wassenberg told the court on Tuesday (April 15) he was working the night shift at a nearby station when he and his partner were alerted to an incident in a street in the suburb.

"When we arrived in the street we could see a group of people in their pyjamas standing by the side of the road," he said.

"They were waving at us so we went straight to them.

"They told us that a silver car parked nearby would be of great interest to us."

Constable Wassenberg said at that time the car was started and the driver fled the scene.

He said he turned his vehicle around to give chase, but lost sight of the silver car after it had turned onto a major thoroughfare.

"I next saw that car a short time later after it had crashed into a Red Rooster," he said.

"I saw a man jump from the passenger seat and he started running away.

"I gave chase on foot through backyards, over fences and through a carpark before I lost sight of him."

Constable Wassenberg told the court the man the police dog squad later tracked down was the same person who he had chased a short time earlier.

He told the court he conducted a visual inspection of the man's crashed car and noticed the front passenger seat was all the way down to the back seats.